[prvc]

Have to disagree about the 'effective' part. Gates seems to have had a knack for massive inefficiencies and negative externalities in every way that he has impacted the world. Think of how many man-hours (measured in human lifetimes) have been wasted due to the shortcomings of various MicroSoft programs. Weigh that against his health initiatives in the third world. Or the impact of dimming the sun by depositing massive quantities of particles in the atmosphere: the resources consumed and carbon emissions that placing them would entail, and of course the intended effect, which is to impede human progress as measured by the Kardashev scale. Everything starts to look much more efficient if this is taken as the goal, though.

[mgraczyk]

Helping to cure polio doesn't outweigh imagined future harms by George engineering that didn't happen yet?

[ok123456]

He's not curing polio, though. His polio program is spreading it because they use a live virus, and a low percentage of the population is getting it. People are now getting paralytic polio from others who got the vaccine.

This is just one example of the Kreuger-Dunning that permeates all aspects of the Gates Foundation. His interventions have been mainly disasters, distorted public policy, and gobbled up biotech IP in the process. He controls the money spicket and is very petty and cocksure about what is "right." Researchers and public policy experts who disagree with his ideas get cut off.

Governments should set public health policy and manage the needs of their people, not billionaires, biotech companies, or NGOs.

[cyberax]

> He's not curing polio, though. His polio program is spreading it because they use a live virus

Wow. Just wow. Where the heck do you get this garbage from?

[mgraczyk]

OPV unfortunately does cause paralytic polio disease indirectly by infecting unvaccinated people. It's worth it IMO because the total number of paralyzed people has decreased, but in the long term we have to switch to IPV to completely eliminate polio. This will take decades and many billions of dollars though.

[cyberax]

Yes, it's called cVDPV. It's caused by the virus in the live vaccine "unweakening" itself, and it's typically happening in people with weakened immune systems (e.g. from chronic malnutrition). It's not causing unvaccinated people to get infected, per se.

Most cases are mild, and on average there are about 300-400 cases per _year_ for the entire world.

But it's absolutely heinous to accuse Gates of deliberately infecting people with the live virus. The weakened vaccine has been the standard for polio vaccination for the last 80 years. There is simply no alternative for it for places like DRC or Chad. Inactivated vaccines require refrigeration and injections, and this is not feasible.

We're >.< this close to eradicating polio: https://polioeradication.org/wild-poliovirus-count/ - there are only two countries with the wild virus. A little bit more, and we can actually stop vaccinating from polio altogether.

[mgraczyk]

I largely agree, but there is essentially no possibility of ever eradicating polio with the current OPV strategy.

If you stop vaccinating, cVDPV will spread person to person. Some people carry virus for decades and it can become infectious at any time, many years after they were first vaccinated or infected. There will sparse but significant episodes until all humans who were vaccinated with OPV (or infected with the wild virus) have died.

but that doesn't mean we shouldn't do it! It's ok if we don't eradicate the virus. The point is to prevent children from being paralyzed, and it works for that.

[mgraczyk]

There are issues with the oral vaccines, but what you're saying is completely untrue. The total number of paralyzed kids has gone down dramatically as a result of the work Gates has done. By any metric, this is a good thing

[codr7]

Plus, he wouldn't touch a project he couldn't make a profit from somehow.

People don't change much.

[mgraczyk]

How does he profit from giving away all of his money?

[codr7]

Dig deep enough and there's always a kickback, some business he's involved in that profits one way or the other.

[mgraczyk]

Do you have any examples?

[therein]

Yup, the Gates worship is incredibly sad.

[codr7]

I don't get how it happened, it's like an epidemic on this site.

It's not like it takes a lot of effort to find out the truth about that scumbag.

[adwf]

Forgive me if I find it somewhat difficult to take seriously an argument by a person judging progress on the Kardashev scale...

You could pick some slightly less sci-fi measures like "number of trivially preventable deaths from diseases for which we have vaccines", for example.